People on board

McKENNA, Violet Adeline née Haxby

Violet Adeline Haxby was born in October 1892 in Ripon, Yorkshire to Albert Haxby and Isabella Lowther. Albert was a ‘Whitesmith’ and the family lived in Allhallowgate in the centre of the town. Violet was the eldest of five girls, one of whom died young. In the 1911 census both she and her fifteen year old sister worked as an ‘Ironer’.

On the 2nd of October 1918 she married Samuel Walter McKenna in the Wesleyan Chapel in Ripon, Yorkshire. Violet was just a few months younger than Samuel. Born in Dundalk, Co Louth, he had enlisted with the Northumberland Fusiliers and was Regimental Quartermaster Sergeant. It appears that they travelled to Ireland after their marriage, perhaps to meet some of his family, and were returning on the 10th of October. Neither survived the sinking though Samuel’s body was recovered and brought to Dundalk where he was buried in the Protestant section of the cemetery. Violet’s body was never recovered.